The most popular addressing method in large area displays is active matrix addressing where the gate and data lines form the rows and columns of the grid-like structure.
FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an active matrix array 100 of an active matrix display. The active matrix array 100 has a plurality of pixels 106. The pixels are controlled by transistors in the electronic backplane. The active matrix array has at least one transistor per pixel that acts as an analog switch. The switching transistor either enables or disables writing of data to that pixel. In FIG. 1, Thin Film Transistor (TFT) 108 is shown as the switching transistor, which is connected to a data line 102 and a gate line 104. The switching transistors of the display array are controlled by a de-multiplexer (also known as a gate driver). The purpose of the gate driver is to sequentially activate every row of the display while data is being written to that row. This data is stored and retained by the active pixels until they get new data in the next frame. This method of writing data to a display array is known as row-by-row addressing.
Currently, amorphous silicon (a-Si:H), polycrystalline silicon, or organic/polymer materials can be used for making the switching transistors in display pixels.
In a-Si:H and polycrystalline silicon, the TFTs suffer from electrical-stress induced meta-stability problems. Therefore, they are not usually used in the implementation of the driving circuitry.
However, if the metastability problems can be overcome, there are significant benefits including cost savings in implementing integrated gate drivers on the display instead of having external chips.
It is also desirable to provide a gate multiplexers/de-multiplexers that can also be integrated with active-matrix imaging arrays, where the imaging pixels are activated row-by-row during image read-out.